TI have always prided myself on trying to see the other person’s point, even if I don’t agree. I believe in the give and take of ideas, I believe in the debate.  This is what democracy is all about, the hammering out of ideas. It should also be about compromise and the choice of the best and brightest ideas, but that’s a post for another day.
Sometimes, though, there is a clear right and clear wrong. Sometimes things really are as simple as good versus evil.  What happened in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend wasn’t two sides equally culpable. One side carried torches, and marched while shouting slogans like ‘Jew won’t replace me’. They were accompanied by a heavily armed militia, they chased a black man into a parking lot and nearly beat him to death, they surrounded a black church and terrorized the occupants who were praying inside. One of them hit the accelerator on his car and plowed into a group of people, killing one young woman and injuring 19 others, a few of them children. The other side?  The worst you can say about them is that some of them had sticks, baseball bats, and bottle rockets and stood their ground. And yes, they were angry and ready to take a stand. The same stand that was taken by our military in 1942, when Americans fought alongside the allied forces to expunge the Third Reich from the face of the earth. The same stand any decent human being should take when confronted by those who would celebrate the genocide of six million Jews and call monuments to the enslavement of countless black Americans a cherished part of their history. 
To suggest these two are equivalent, that the side that committed murder and terrorized people, the side that believes that anyone who is not white and Christian should be expelled from the country or, worse, destroyed,  is equivalent to those who tried to stop them, is a moral outrage. It is like saying the Jews are in part responsible for the holocaust, or that the people in the twin towers are responsible for the attacks on 9/11. They are not. To suggest otherwise is to give credence to hate. It is giving respectability to evil.
When the President of the United States, the man who is supposed to be the moral compass of our country, stands up and suggests that both sides are at fault, we have lost our moral compass. We have lost our right to say we are a great and moral country, we have lost our standing as the shining city on the hill.
There are many good people in America. Most of us are appalled by the actions of the so-called ‘Alt-right’ neo-Nazis and white supremacists.  We need to stand up to this evil. We cannot be still. If the president cannot join in the fight, if he cannot lead us to the moral high ground, then he must be taken down. It really is that simple.
​

I began working on this poem last week. It seems appropriate after the events in Charlotteville, Va, this weekend. It's a bit rough, still. And it's not enough. I don't think words will ever be enough. But, sometimes, they are all we have. 

The stranger at the crossroads
 
So unlike you--
skin brown as chestnuts,
hair braided into dreadlocks,
His lilting language an unfamiliar jumble of sound.
You stand in anticipation of catastrophe;
He’ll wash away your face, your true name, you say.
The fear so strong it makes you yell
“Mine. Mine.” until, hoarse with hatred, your throat is sore.
Red faced, panting,
 
you have forgotten what came before,
forgotten the only thing that will endure long after your fisted rage is done:
Love fearless and undaunted by the color of skin
Love that knows your hands, his hands reach the same
Love that understands fire and flame
Love that unites us, binds us, holds us
Love that can bring us to our knees, and stand us up again.
Love that sings out in lilting language, "You are me." 
 
No jumble of sound, the message is clear--
How is it that your fail to hear?
 
​

I've been thinking, lately, of the meaning of home and the nostalgic memories we have of childhood. This poem, like the picture, is a reflection.
​

​Impossible Light
 
The geography of home
holds the soft topography of undulating hills,
is reflected in clouds playing hide and seek with sun
in water so blue it strikes the heart.
The smell of pine is sweet in the green yard where you skipped rope
and the treehouse where you told your secrets to the wind.
There is the doorway where your mother called your name,
the garden where daisies and roses grew in midday sun.

At least, this is what you remember.
The maps of your memory have been washed over by the salt of your life
until they are diaphanous and shiny.

You’ve packed and unpacked a thousand suitcases to find that country again,
a place that says to you, ‘this is what you are looking for’
The land that eludes you is fragile as the scent of winter.
it wafts past like the ghost of those you knew--
those red warm faces gathered by a fire,
their bell like laughter an echo.
You’ll go all the way to where the landscape dissolves to a vanishing point
to find it again.
And all the while it remains just beyond the reach of your feet,
the impossible light you search.
.